It's my birthday tomorrow.

Well. If there are any lingering veggies and I didn't scare them off with the previous meaty offering, the following is something loosely adapted from a Delia recipe, which I decided was infinitely more like chilli than any pasta sauce I'd ever seen.

Easy Pepper Chilli

Ingredients
(I do per person, because I'm all on my own these days. Test those basic maths skills...)
1 red pepper, de-seeded and cut into 5mm strips
2 smallish cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1 quite large tomato, roughly chopped
0.5-1 tsp cumin seeds (I like cumin - go for half if you're not me, you can always add a bit more!)
Dried chilli flakes or chilli powder to taste. Again, start with a few and add more.
1 tsp tomato puree
10ml or so of olive oil. Enough to fry things in to start with.

To serve:
Plain rice, lots of grated cheese (story: I wrote 'greater' instead of 'grated' the first time round...and there's no auto-correct involved, here. There must be something Freudian there.)


Method

• Heat the cumin seeds in a dry pan until fragrant, then add the oil, pepper, garlic and chilli. Stir it all around to coat, then put a lid on it, put it on the lowest heat possible and go away and do something else for 20 minutes - nipping in now and again to stir it. Don't worry if everything looks a bit dark, this is part of the flavour. Having said that, don't let it ACTUALLY burn - dark brown gooey is fine, black and dry is not. Take it off the heat for a few minutes if you need to.
• At the end of 20 minutes, the peppers should be pretty soft. This is the point to start cooking rice. Add the chopped tomatoes to the pan and stir it a few times, then add the tomato puree about a tablespoon of boiling water. Put the lid back on and leave it to simmer for about 5 minutes, until the tomato collapses and you have a very thick sauce.
• Serve, over rice, with cheese over the top to melt, and some black pepper. Garlic bread and salad would be good, too. And some sport to watch and a beer to drink if you're so inclined. Watching other people play with the Wii and drinking cider is probably my choice, but whatever tickles your fancy.